Buying, Managing & Selling Websites For Profit - Learn the Real Tricks of the Trade

Saturation. Probably the most over-used word in our industry and used by many naysayers to scare people away from profitable niches and business opportunities.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve had potential customers of my info-products come to me and ask “can this be saturated?” My answer is always no. Some may disagree with me, but for 99.9% of individuals, any decent sized market has plenty of room for them to earn a decent amount monthly. Only for large corporations with huge resources at their disposal and ability to scale up a business would saturation occur, in my opinion.

Let’s start by defining exactly what we mean by “market saturation”:

When the amount of product provided in a market has been maximized in the current state of the marketplace. At the point of saturation, further growth can only be achieved through product improvements, market share gains or a rise in overall consumer demand (From Investopedia).

Put simply, it is where there are too many people in a market to make it profitable to enter.

As a lot of you know, I co-author a course on site flipping. So many people ask me whether the market is dead, saturated or whatever you want to call it. These “the sky is falling” stories are everywhere. I don’t really believe in saturation, especially if you operate small scale. As long as you differentiate, there will always be profits to be made. Obviously, if 100 people started selling exactly the same website with the same listing copy with the same everything then it would get saturated – but that’s plain stupid, and anyone doing that isn’t going to remain in business for long.

Many people overlook other demand side factors when looking at a market. All too often online, people cry “saturation” as an excuse for falling demand or losing sales. More often than not it could be a multitude of other factors.

In recent months, a lot of people have been discussing falling sales in the turnkey website market and this has increased the number of “is it saturated” questions I receive. Here’s part of my reply to a client earlier this week:

“If you are building from scratch then the market has slowed since May but I would put this down to most part-timers (i.e. people who buy turnkey sites) being on their summer holidays. The market isn't going anywhere for those who flip properly - just a mere seasonal dip as people slack off for the summer”

Everyone needs a summer holiday and I would argue that even those who are full time Internet Marketers like to enjoy their summer too. The lifestyle choice we have taken to be full time facilitates taking breaks and holidays when we like (within reason) and not being tied down to 22 days holiday a year. I must admit, I’m not very scientific and have no numerical proof of my theory. It just makes sense to me that in our industry sales would drop in the summer months being more likely than a multi-billion dollar per year market being “saturated” by a few new vendors on one marketplace (Flippa being the most commonly cited).

The “S” word irritates me and is just used far too often. Of course, if you are a sheep and just copy others, their ideas may become “saturated” but proper business models executed on a relatively small scale with differentiation aren’t going to become saturated. I do tend to relate all my experiences back to buying and selling websites – as that’s what my business is. Other people may have opinions on saturation elsewhere in Internet marketing and I’d welcome any follow up comments. I’ll address people’s thoughts in my next article this weekend. Good to be back and look forward to feedback